As it is well known commercial rotisseries for cooking chickens and like foods has grown in popularity over the last several years and because of the heavy usage and high temperature operation the designer of this type of equipment is confronted with problems that concern the wear, maintainability, concentricity, ease of operation, efficiency and flavor imparted to the chicken. Examples of rotisseries that exemplify the commercial types of rotisseries that shares common concerns with the present invention are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,136,933 granted to Riccio on Feb. 9, 1993 entitled "Cooking Apparatus with Rotisserie and Reclamation Trap", U.S. Pat. No. 5,136,933 granted to Derakhshan on Aug. 11, 1992 and entitled "Rotary Orbital Rotisserie" and U.S. Pat. No. 4,214,516 granted to Friedl et al on Jul. 29, 1980 entitled "Barbecue Oven". In these prior art rotisseries the spit or skewer is rotated about its own axis and orbits about the rotisserie oven by virtue of spaced drums or reel plates that are mutually rotated and horizontally support the skewer for rotary motion. In each instance the skewer end is inserted in a driver that is attached to the reel plate and is connected to a planet gear or other mechanism that rotates the individual skewer.
The concern of this invention is the planetary system that serves to rotate each of the skewers about their own axis. In order to assure that the axis of the skewer remains in its track and remains concentric it is important that the gears in the individual gears in the planetary gear system remain co-planar. This not only improves the wear and tear of the components but also assures that the chicken will remain in its spatial relationship relative to the high temperature burner so as to not adversely affect the taste of the chicken. Additionally, the rotation of the skewer is controlled so that the chicken passes at a different angular location relative to the burner at each revolution for one complete cycle.
I have found that by mounting the bull or sun gear of the planetary gear system coaxilly with the shaft of the reel plates and rotatably supporting the shaft by a bearing attached to the hub of the bull gear so that the shaft rotates relative to the bull gear the gears in the planetary gear system will remain co-planar. This also assures even wear on the rotating parts.
I provide a helical spring biasing the bull or sun gear in the planetary gear train so that the gears remain coplanar which may otherwise not occur due to the manufacturing and tolerances of the rotisserie.